This blog is about debating political issues, with specific reference to human rights

It is a Myth That 300,000 Were Raped in East Pakistan

“Roman Catholic Relief Agency put the figure of rapes to as low as 4000. In fact, only ten cases of rapes had been reported till August 31, 1971, and the culprits tried and punished. These few cases were swollen to the exasperating figure of 300,000. The falsity of Sheikh Mujib’s repeated allegation of rape of 300,000 Bengali women was exposed when the abortion team he had commissioned from United Kingdom in early 1972 found that there were no more than a hundred or so pregnancy cases they could deal with throughout their stay in Bangladesh.”-Brig. Asif Haroon Raja exposes the lies behind the propaganda.

It has been alleged that Pakistani troops raped 300,000 women on and after March 25, 1971 in former East Pakistan. This allegation has generally been accepted by the world at large and even by some Pakistani secular pseudo intellectuals like Tahira Abdullah, Asma Jehangir and others. Sheikh Mujib was the inventor of this themes fed to him by India.

This was phenomenal exaggeration which has no parallel in history. Rather than blindly buying the bloated figures, it should have been coolly analyzed by saner elements whether it was humanly possible to perform those unholy acts at such a gigantic scale.

No one questioned as to how the Indians had gathered the data since the Army had gained total control over the province from May 1971 onwards. Direct linkage between the people and rebels housed in India had been broken.

The version of refugees who had fled to India after the military operation couldn’t be relied upon, being entirely at the mercy of Indian Army and BSF living in unsavory conditions.

Foreign journalists based in Dacca had been asked by Lt Gen Tikka Khan to leave because of their biased reporting. Jilted journalists moved to Calcutta where they were lavishly entertained by Indians. Nursing ill-feelings, they went out of the way to magnify the stories fed to them by Indian media and broadcasted exaggerated news the world over.

Even if the entire Army and paramilitary forces numbering 12,000 on 25 March 1971, later increased to 45,000 had only one objective in mind of raping any female coming their way day in and day out, even at the cost of sleep and other essential daily rituals, it was still impossible to reach anywhere near the stated figure.

It can now be safely concluded that the rapes committed by Awami League (AL) urchins in March-April 1971, and again in November- December 1971, as well as by Indian staff supervising refugee camps from March 1971 till February 1972 were all lumped in the account of Pak Army.

Indian Army soldiers and officers had also indulged in daily sex for the entire period of their stay in Bangladesh after 16 December 1971.

Roman Catholic Relief Agency put the figure of rapes to as low as 4000. (New York Times, January 30, 1972). In fact, only ten cases of rapes had been reported till August 31, 1971, and the culprits tried and punished. These few cases were swollen to the exasperating figure of 300,000. The falsity of Sheikh Mujib’s repeated allegation of rape of 300,000 Bengali women was exposed when the abortion team he had commissioned from United Kingdom in early 1972 found that there were no more than a hundred or so pregnancy cases they could deal with throughout their stay in Bangladesh. (Bangladesh Papers, Vanguard, Lahore, page 287).

The AL government opened many centres in Bangladesh and gave wide calls to the rape victims named as ‘heroines’ to come forward and register their names so that they could be rehabilitated. Not more than one hundred or so who reported to the centres were given into marriages and perforce the centres had to be closed down. These cases were also in all probability the victims of rapists in Indian refugee camps.

Dr. M. Abdul Mumin Chowdhry, a Bengali nationalist who actively participated in the separatist cause, writes in his book ‘Behind the Myth of Three Million’, writes:

‘It was reported that on arrival in Dhaka on 10 January 1972, the lobby behind the fabrication of the absolutely impossible figure promptly briefed the returning Bangladesh leader Sheikh Mujib with added ‘fact’, of 300,000 women raped, who in turn immediately went on parroting it. Thus the fiction of three million killed and 300,000 women raped was created’.

He gives research-based details of each major incident that was blamed on Pakistan; and the rapes of 300,000, now enhanced to 400,000 women, resulting in 200,000 pregnancies.

One of Pakistani PoW Maj (now retired Brig) M. Azad on his way to India after the surrender had stayed a night in transit along with others at Krishanagar in West Bengal. The camp in which they were housed was well laid out and didn’t like a hurriedly made make-shift arrangement. The in-charge of the camp, a Sikh major, in usual Sikh style of light-heartedness and frankness, got chummy with Azad and told him that the camp had not been prepared for Pak PoWs but was meant to keep rebellious Bengalis who refused to participate in guerrilla war. He added that sissies were taken to task and made to perform allotted tasks, while their womenfolk were kept as hostages to serve their carnal needs. He boasted that he and his colleagues had thoroughly enjoyed raping thousands of Bengali women during their nine-month confinement. Laughingly he added that many virgins were impregnated. He divulged that many more suchlike camps for unwilling Bengalis had been established in other areas. This inadvertent disclosure would give an idea to independent readers that who were the actual rapists of Bengali women.

Besides resorting to series of atrocities, Indian security forces are using rape as a weapon of war to subjugate the Kashmiris demanding their birth right of self-determination. Kashmiris want independence from India at all cost. Incidents of rapes and gang rapes in Indian occupied Kashmir are on the increase, but no Indian soldier or policeman has ever been punished. While there was lot of hue and cry over gang rape of an Indian woman in New Delhi, no voice has ever been raised in India over rapes of thousands of Kashmiri women, as if they are not human beings. It is puzzling as to why the ever vigilant western media has never mentioned a word about thousands of rapes committed in IOK? Or is it that it has different yardstick for Muslims and non-Muslims?

Share this:

Like this:

Related

Published by alaiwah

ALAIWAH'S PHILOSOPHY
About 12 years ago, while studying Arabic in Cairo, I became friends with some Egyptian students. As we got to know each other better we also became concerned about each other’s way of life. They wanted to save my soul from eternally burning in hell by converting me to Islam. I wanted to save them from wasting their real life for an illusory afterlife by converting them to the secular worldview I grew up with.
In one of our discussions they asked me if I was sure that there is no proof for God’s existence.
The question took me by surprise. Where I had been intellectually socialized it was taken for granted that there was none.
I tried to remember Kant’s critique of the ontological proof for God. “Fine,” Muhammad said, “but what about this table, does its existence depend on a cause?” “Of course,” I answered. “And its cause depends on a further cause?” Muhammad was referring to the metaphysical proof for God’s existence, first formulated by the Muslim philosopher
Avicenna.
Avicenna argues, things that depend on a cause for their existence must have something that exists through itself as their first cause. And this necessary existent is God. I had a counter-argument to that to which they in turn had a rejoinder. The discussion ended inconclusively.
I did not convert to Islam, nor did my Egyptian friends become atheists. But I learned an important lesson from our discussions: that I hadn’t properly thought through some of the most basic convictions underlying my way of life and worldview — from God’s existence to the human good.
The challenge of my Egyptian friends forced me to think hard about these issues and defend views that had never been questioned in the milieu where I came from.
These discussions gave me first-hand insight into how deeply divided we are on fundamental moral, religious and philosophical questions. While many find these disagreements disheartening, I will argue that they can be a good thing — if we manage to make them fruitful for a culture debate.
Can we be sure that our beliefs about the world match how the world actually is and that our subjective preferences match what is objectively in our best interest? If the truth is important to us these are pressing questions.
We might value the truth for different reasons: because we want to live a life that is good and doesn’t just appear so; because we take knowing the truth to be an important component of the good life; because we consider living by the truth a moral obligation independent of any consequences; or because we want to come closer to God who is the Truth. Of course we wouldn’t hold our beliefs and values if we weren’t convinced that they are true. But that’s no evidence that they are.
Weren’t my Egyptian friends just as convinced of their views as I was of mine? More generally: don’t we find a bewildering diversity of beliefs and values, all held with great conviction, across different times and cultures? If considerations such as these lead you to concede that your present convictions could be false, then you are a fallibilist.
And if you are a fallibilist you can see why valuing the truth and valuing a culture of debate are related: because you will want to critically examine your beliefs and values, for which a culture of debate offers an excellent setting.
View all posts by alaiwah

9 thoughts on “It is a Myth That 300,000 Were Raped in East Pakistan”

Hi Never Mind Team,
The language/terms used in this article (quoting which, also questions my good taste and likes) speaks of an arrogant, conceited, megalomaniac, parochial mindset. Which unfortunately was the mindset of the Pakistani economic-cultural-political-military elite of the 1950’s, 1960’s. This perverted-distorted mindset was the genesis of the exploitative and biased discriminatory feelings against the people of Baanglaadesh. Can the author deny and dispute that Baanglaadesh (the then East Pakistan, was treated in the same manner by coreligionist Pakistanis like the imperial colonial British. So much for equality and justice of the ‘elitist Paak-Pures’).

I do not deny that the legitimate aspirations and aims of the people of Baanglaadesh was sabotaged as well as hijacked by the Government of India for furthering economic, political, military and diplomatic goals. But who committed the original sin of economic-cultural-political-lingual and social exploitation? It was the Pakistani economic, political, military, social microscopic elite. And who still exploit the average common mass of Pakistanis.

So please come out of the perverted megalomaniac aims and ideals and do something practical and positive to stop the present ongoing exploitation in Iislaamic Republic of Pakistan. Why are the Paakhtoon, Balooch people so unhappy over the governing Punjaabi-Sindhi elitist ‘clique’

The time has come to ponder seriously and look for some harsh answers.

Dear Sonia,
Let us have an open psych and mind, if u read the observations/comments carefully and calmly you can very easily see, never have I, ever tried to protect/condone/legitimize the Indian political-diplomatic and military actions in Baanglaadesh, but let us not try to defend the economic-cultural-political-social exploitation of the people of Baanglaadesh by a cream of ‘elitist vested interested’ Pakistani clique who led this exploitation resulting in the birth of Baanglaadesh, and is still leading this exploitation of the majority of the poor-marginalised-downtrodden common mass of people in Pakistan.

Pakistan(Paak staan) was created by incorporating ethnic-cultural-linguistically diverse but united by religion, population of the subcontinent. It was a homeland created or so it was thought, for the Iislaamic people of the subcontinent.

But even after 65 and a half years later have we seen the establishment Iislaamic egalitarianism-utilitarianism-humanism in Pakistan. Let us be clear, straightforward and honest and call a ‘hammer a hammer’ the answer is a strong NO.

Two wrongs can never and will never make one ‘right’.
in a political-military-diplomatic game for power of the elites, it is always the poor, downtrodden and marginalised who has suffered.

Time has strongly come to stop this immoral, impractical and irrational ‘sin’. To be a good Mosleem this should always the aim, ideal and motto of our lives.

Btw y don’t you Indians leave our politics to us!!!
Y are your noses aching to get into our politics- see that is the point- when you don’t know something about a topic- kindly keep you mouth shut and don’t press that keyboard!!!
Its high time you guys stopped poking around and wondered y there is so much corruption in your own system and y is your Army just sleeping around with women!!!

Dear Sonia,
It is all but very natural political, military, diplomatic game of one- upmanship that India took a very shrewd advantage, but was it not that the ‘Paki’ elite provided the Union government of India, to divert the attention of the common mass of Indian people from their daily dose of harsh hardships. Create a ‘Parochial Paranoia and Phobia’ against Pakistan.

But can u and do you deny and dispute the fact that the people of East Bengal.East Pakistan/now Baanglaadesh were not economically-culturally-linguistically-politically-socially exploited by a clique/coterie of ‘elitist vested interest group’ (Pardon my bad habit of repeatation/reiteration).

Were the people of Baanglaadesh happy from 1947-1970, atleast Bengalee Mosleems were numerically superior as well took one of the most leading part in the creation of Pakistan(but were they given their just and legitimate share of respect, dignity and honour?)

Let us have an open, clear and broad mind(free from parochialism-bias and discrimination)

Reblogged this on Sonia K's Blog and commented:
Pakistan Army has always been blamed for raping their own Muslim sisters in Bangladesh. Did they? Were they so stuck up??? Were they that bad?? Many people from our media circles and the educated circles love to propagate the worst numbers, but it looks like there were some players that were never mentioned, never got the credit that they should have!!!

Again the mere foot soldiers of the Pakistani Army have become a ‘powerless pawn’ in an imperial-western-colonial-capitalist aggression against brother and sister Mosleems of Aafganistaan, Paakhtoonistaan, Baloochistaan.

The day u try and drop being so wordy – I would definitely want to debate on every matter- till then you can live on with your words and paste then in whatever way you like. Live on wordy soldier- you win!!!

Dear Sonia,
I take it as a very good compliment. But even if i stop being ‘wordy’ and start a straightforward debate based on facts and facts alone, u will not be able to win because i always have my facts ready and arguments logically-rationally set.

The above statement/sentence speaks of my arrogance and conceit may be, but i am confident and ready definitely.